Acute Heart Failure, 90-Day Mortality, and Gravitational Ischemia in the Brain.

During the 90 days following hospitalization for acute heart failure, the ejection fraction and type of discharge medications have been shown in clinical trials to have little effect on mortality. We examined the recent literature addressing brain-related etiologies of sudden death following heart failure. Two mechanisms of sudden unexpected death have been suggested to possibly result from four significant influences on pathophysiology in the brain.